Welcome to The Lost Book!

The Lost Book is a collaborative adventure in storytelling. It’s taking place online and anyone can join in. At its heart is an animated web series: the adventures of 21st century investigative journalist, and BookCrosser, Aileen Adler. Episode 2, the first of five episodes to be written by the public, was launched on Friday 06 March 2009. It sees intrepid Scottish journalist Aileen and her dog Watson travelling to Iowa City in search of a stolen book and a secret society of bibliophiles - watch the story so far.

Where the story goes next remains in your hands. You can suggest plot developments by visiting www.thelostbook.net now. Each month between now and July the storylines will be pulled together into the next episode, animated and published online.

There are loads of ways you can get involved and it won’t cost you anything. You can help us to write the story for the web series. You can join our special guest writer Jasper Fforde to reconstruct a stolen book in our weekly microstory competition. You can enter our soundtrack competition by creating your own music for the web series. You can produce your own animation.

And, you can read this book, tell us what you thought of it, give it away, and follow its journey.

The Lost Book is a partner project to the Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature Trust’s 2009 reading campaign, The Lost World Read 2009, which is using free books, online resources and events to get people reading The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle. The Lost World Read is the largest collaborative reading project ever seen in the UK. We're extending the reading campaign, thanks to the generosity of project sponsors Canongate, by giving away other free books throughout The Lost Book.

Being Emily is the coming of age story of Fiona, one of four O'Connell children. The language, Fiona's native Glaswegian Scots, brings the characters vividly to life.

So join in, wherever you are, and have fun!

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

This book is travelling to the 2009 BookCrossing convention in Christchurch, New Zealand.

If you've found this book - welcome to BookCrossing! I hope you enjoy Being Emily and then pass it on to continue its journey. It'd be great to find out where it has travelled to and read your review. You can stay completely anonymous if you prefer, or you can join BookCrossing (it's free) if you'd like to take part in this booklovers' community.

To find out more about the adventure of The Lost Book, go to the website at www.thelostbook.net and to read more about The Lost World and the reading campaign check out www.lostworldread.com.

On its way to the box of books for the convention, this book "accidentally" slipped into my TBR pile :-) And I'm so glad it did - not only was it a wonderful story, but the language adds so much to it. I can't imagine a story about the Glasgow tenements being nearly as effective if it was written in standard English. And as well as my inner linguist being pleased to see a book written in Scots (it is a very distinct language from English, and as such deserves to have its own literature), there was a personal pleasure in seeing written down the language I grew up listening to my Granny and Granda speak (although Granny would deny they spoke anything like a Glaswegian - they were from Greenock, and proudly proclaimed the superiority of that city over Glasgow, which was "auffie rough").

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CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

Given to Lytteltonwitch at this morning's meetup, so she can read it before it goes in the convention box.

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I had to release this book outside the Backpackers in Cathedral Square, Christchurch as my suitcase was too heavy to take back to the UK.